Baseball Coach Apologizes to Gay Player for “We Kill Gay People” RemarkFollowing a revelation by gay former pitcher Tyler Dunnington about quitting the St. Louis Cardinals’ minor league team after hearing players and a coach talk about killing gay people, team officials investigated and uncovered the coach in question was Colorado Mesa University (CMU) coach Sean McKinney.

McKinney has apologized and also called Dunnington to make a personal apology, saying he wants him to have a good life. In a conversation with Outsports, the school says that rather than fire McKinney, it will use his genuine desire to make amends as a learning experience to move the entire campus forward in an understanding of LGBT issues. McKinney also had lunch with LGBT members of the university and reported that their stories were eye-opening for him.

Candace Parker Not Picked for U.S. Women’s Basketball Team for Rio OlympicsCandace Parker has been left off the U.S. women’s basketball team headed to the Rio Olympics. The two-time WNBA MVP and two-time Olympic gold medalist learned from USA Basketball recently that she wouldn’t be part of the team. Although injuries caused her to miss half the WNBA season, she scored career high marks in points, rebounds and assists when she did return. The decision was a surprise to everyone, including Parker.

Deflategate’s Back: A Struggle for Power and Control Between the NFL and the NFLPAJudges in the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reinstated NY Patriot’s QB Tom Brady’s Deflategate four-game suspension, overturning Federal judge Richard Berman’s September decision. While the court acknowledged there were flaws on both sides of the argument, they ruled the system used by the league and the players association had been agreed on in their current collective bargaining agreement, making it clear that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s decision to suspend Brady was within his authority.

The appeal wasn’t about Brady’s guilt or innocence; it was really about whether or not Goodell had the authority to suspend Brady for his role in footballs being deflated. However, the court did address Brady destroying his cell phone. Judge Barrington D. Parker, who wrote the majority opinion, said that Brady’s destruction of his cell phone raised the stakes “from air in a football to compromising the integrity of a proceeding that the commissioner had convened.”

The NFL has won the battle but the fallout from this decision is almost certain to be a major issue when the next contract negotiation with the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) rolls around.

Two WNBA Stars Differ on Women’s SportsIn the on-going debate on how to raise visibility in women’s basketball, Elena Delle Donne, the Chicago Sky star told For the Win that she’d like to see the rims in women’s basketball lowered from their current 10-feet, adding that UConn head coach Geno Auriemma agrees with her. She went on to note that women’s volleyball nets are lower, women’s golf tees are closer, women’s tennis they play fewer sets … and it continues. But in an ESPNW column from Kate Fagan, she quoted Mercury star Diana Taurasi saying, “Might as well put us in skirts and back in the kitchen.”

U.S. Women’s Soccer Stars Accuse U.S. Soccer oF Wage of DiscriminationFive of the top stars of U.S. women’s soccer, Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn and Hope Solo, have filed a federal complaint accusing U.S. Soccer of wage discrimination, saying they earned as little as 40 percent of what players on the U.S. men’s national team earned. Some feel the outcome of this case may be a turning point not only in sports but also in the workplace in general.

Goalkeeper Solo said, “The numbers speak for themselves. We are the best in the world, have three World Cup champion-ships, four Olympic championships.” She also said the men’s players “get paid more to just show up than we get paid to win major championships.”

Michael Sam Talks Racism Versus Homophobia in LGBT Community

Michael Sam has said there’s a level of racism in the LGBT community. In an interview in Attitude Magazine he recounted that he’d experienced high levels of racism in the gay community since he came out.

“It’s terrible,” he said. “People have told me I’m not gay enough, people have told me I’m not black enough. I don’t know what that means. You want to be accepted by other people but you don’t even accept someone just because of the color of their skin? I just don’t understand that at all. How are you saying that, ‘Oh, I want people to accept me because I’m gay but I don’t accept you because you’re black, or because you’re white or because you’re Asian?’”

About homophobia within the African-American community, he said he can only go by his own experience, saying that there are lots of openly gay black people and his experience is that people are more accepting of gay people. But then he says that “There are people who are over religious who go, ‘Oh, you’re a fag, you’re going to hell.’ That’s everywhere. Ted Cruz is pretty much anti-gay.”

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